Blog

One day you wake up to a particularly tough challenge. You get together with your people and make a plan. You work your ass off all day and make some inroads. You feel good as you head home, congratulate yourself for the progress with a refreshing beverage, and get a good night’s rest.

You wake up the next morning to the same challenge.

But somehow, nothing has changed. There are no signs of any progress from the day before. In fact, none of your people even remember getting together and making a plan. So you do it all over again.

But the same thing happens the next day.

And the next day, and the next.

It’s Groundhog Day.

This may never have happened to you exactly like this. But I’m sure you’ve had experiences where it felt like you were doing the same thing over and over and over again.

The question is, how do you break through a surreal existence in a real world, and solve the problem?

The wonderful and terrible answer: It’s been up on the big screen for 20 years, but the author just passed away.

What’s certain is, it’s a great guide for anyone who has ever had a stubborn problem that seems permanently unfixable; the kind that makes you feel like you’re trapped in an odd purgatory of unsolvability.

In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors is a pretty unlikeable guy whose initial reaction to reliving the same awful day over and over is not positive. His does bad things to others. He does bad things to himself.

But ultimately, he finds out the key to the door that takes him away from his personal hell:

He embraces people and all of their quirky strengths and weaknesses. He opts for optimism. And probably because it’s the movies, not only does he solve his problem, he finds love.

There’s no telling how far you can get with a little bit of optimism and a belief in your fellow person. Even in the stickiest, most Groundhog Day-est type challenges.

And when you do, Harold Ramis will look down on you and smile.

Search for:

Follow Twist Your Thinking

Enter your email address to follow our blog and receive notifications of new posts by email!